FIA World Endurance Championship will have five Ferrari GTE Am cars in the 2021 season.
Ferrari has made an announcement on behalf of all their teams for the upcoming season, with the Italian brand upscaling from four to five cars.
AF Corse returns with the defending Championship #83, which one again will be driven by Nicklas Nielsen and Francois Perrodo. They will be joined by Alessio Rovera – a young Italian with a Silver ranking. Nicklas Nielsen had the same status during the 2019/20 season, with him being a Gold driver now. Perrodo will try to reclaim the GTE Am title, after winning it in both 2016 and 2019/20 season. He raced in LMP2 in the meantime, but never really felt comfortable. On the other hand, he is really comfortable racing with Nielsen, so that’s why he is back in the car. The team has also announced that they will run in the European Le Mans Series too, but with Emmanuel Collard instead of Nielsen.
AF Corse will enter a second car, which is the well known #54. Giancarlo Fisichella, Thomas Flohr and Francesco Castellacci are once again teammates in the (most likely) grey Ferrari with Vistajet branding. They haven’t been able to string a full season together until now, but they will try to make it better in 2021.
Cetilar Racing will move from LMP2 to GTE Am. The Italian team already worked together with AF Corse during the 2019/20, with them running their Dallara. The car will have its last outing at Daytona this and next week, before Roberto Lacorte will jump into a Ferrari 488 GTE Evo. His co-drivers are not yet announced.
Photo: JJ Media
Last but not least, the Iron Lynx team will expand from ELMS to FIA WEC with two cars. Claudio Schiavoni, Matteo Cressoni and Andrea Piccini will share car #60, with Cressoni replacing Sergio Pianezzola. The team has been dominating in the the Michelin Le Mans Cup during the last few seasons, plus mixing up in the top of ELMS too.
Michelle Gatting, Rahel Frey and Manuela Gostner will enter in the team’s second car, running #85, since #83 is already taken. The three women will build on their good results from the previous two seasons in the ELMS, with four podiums in 11 races, plus fighting for third in the championship in both seasons.
We have said goodbye to Red River Sport in the Ferrari fold, but we haven’t heard any official news from them yet. They have previously ran in different brands, so they are not locked in to being a Ferrari team.
MR Racing wont enter either, with COVID-19 as their reasoning. Team owner and driver Motoaki Ishikawa is near 60 years old himself, plus he is working with elderly people in his full time job.
The full FIA WEC entry list for 2021 will be released within the next 36 hours.
